For days now, television viewers have watched Sarah Palin unable to explain the significance of her home state's bordering Russia, unable to name a Supreme Court ruling she disagrees with, unable to name a single newspaper she reads....

Harry Bernstein's first critical success came with his memoir The Invisible Wall , published two years ago when he was 96. It described his upbringing in an impoverished Lancashire town, where the Jews lived on one side of the street and the Christians on the other. Though he'd been a writer all his...

After the early risers and the guests with children have left, when the party has been whittled down to the philosophers, the poets and the drunkards, I like to turn the lights low and listen to the breathy voice of the first lady of France. That would be Carla Bruni, the newly espoused wife of N......